Peace, family.

My name is Charles H.F. Davis III and I am a third-generation educator, organizer, and artist committed to the lives, love, and liberation of everyday Black people. I am currently a faculty member in the Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education at the University of Michigan, where my research and teaching broadly focus on issues of race, racism, and resistance in education and society. I also am the founder and director of the Campus Abolition Research Lab, an interdisciplinary research incubator focused on leveraging data and critical analyses to disrupt and dismantle the carceral university while collaboratively reimagining postsecondary education as a life-affirming institution.

As a scholar I have produced a variety of publications including research articles, books, and essays as well as several short and feature-length films. As a creative, I primarily use photography and film to explore the materiality of Black culture and the sociopolitical lives of everyday Black people, in the United States and abroad. My work has been featured in, but not limited to, the Los Angeles Times, Bloomberg News, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and cited in amicus briefs to the Supreme Court of the United States. Additionally, I was named a 2020 Emerging Scholar by Diverse Issues in Higher Education, a 2021 recipient of National Academy of Education/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship, and a 2024 inductee into the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Collegium of Scholars at Morehouse College.

In addition to my scholarship, I spent my early-career as an organizational strategist and research administrator where I helped launch two national racial equity research centers at the University of Pennsylvania and University of Southern California. In my roles, I had the opportunity provide assessment and evaluation, strategic consultation, and professional and organizational learning more the 7,000 students, educators, and institutional leaders from more than 100 colleges and universities in the United States and abroad.

Most notably I have given invited lectures at Brown University, Columbia University, Florida A&M University, Grambling State University, the Sorbonne University in Paris, Stanford University, and Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania. I am two-time graduate of The Florida State University where I earned a bachelor’s degree in English with a minor in African American Studies and a master’s degree Integrated Marketing Communications. Additionally, I hold a master’s degree from the Penn Graduate School of Education and earned my doctorate from the Center for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Arizona.

As an organizer, I am the founder and director for the Scholars for Black Lives collective, an international group of grassroots and university thinkers who are politically committed to the labor of engaged scholarship, public teaching, and advocacy to the end of improving the material conditions for everyday Black people. I also serve as a board member of BLDPWR, an organization that engages pop culture, education, wellness and activism to build and train an inclusive community of entertainers and athletes to advance radical social change. I currently reside in Ann Arbor, Michigan but still consider Black Lives Matter Los Angeles and Dream Defenders as my two political homes.